Pterosaur Fossilised Before Hatching

Pterosaur fossilised before hatching, as reported in Nature Science Update, 10 June 2004, Nature vol 429, p621 and New Scientist, 12 June 2004, p15. Palaeontologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found a fossilised egg containing a baby pterosaur in Yixian formation at Jingangshan in the Liaonng province of northeastern China. These rocks have been dated by the potassium-argon method as 121 million years old. The pterosaur was well formed with its wing bones tightly folded and was probably only days away from hatching. Because it is so well preserved the scientists who found it believe it was rapidly buried by some natural disaster such as a volcanic eruption. The egg, which is about the same size as a hen’s egg, was squashed without cracking the shell, indicating the shell was soft like a present day reptile egg. Dave Unwin, an expert on pterosaurs at Humboldt University, Berlin, commented that if pterosaurs laid soft shell eggs they could not have incubated their eggs by sitting on them.

Editorial Comment: This fossil also reminds us of how small baby reptiles including Dinosaurs were (and are), compared with their adult size. This means Noah would have had no problem fitting pterosaurs on the ark if God sent him some young ones, even though some of the adults reached 40 ft wing span. When such well preserved fossils are found scientists will admit they must have been formed by rapid deep burial, but they always assume it was from an isolated small disaster. If you add up all the presumed isolated small fossil-burying disasters, they easily add up to one large world-wide catastrophe. (Ref. pterosaur, eggs, fossils)